Loss

The house smells of stale smoke and strangers. The police left a little while ago, Bill shortly after. He asked if I needed him to stay, bless him. He looked so relieved when I said no. Now it's just me, sitting in the dark in the empty parlour.
I get up to make a drink, pick up his mug from the draining board, pour milk into it before I even realise what I'm doing. I can't seem to put it back on the shelf, but finishing the job, making his milky tea and leaving it to cool in the mug seems even worse. I can't go on and I can't go back.
Instead, I sit at the kitchen table, in his chair. Looking at the world from his point of view, seeing what he saw. The scarred table top looks like the surface of the moon; Old burn marks for craters, the criss cross marks of the bread knife, jagged teeth tearing deeply into the old teak. I lie my hands on the raw wood and stare at them for an hour. Maybe I fall asleep. Maybe not. The hour passes. My hands age. The skin tightens, the knuckles swell and thicken as the fingers lose their nimble dexterity. It doesn't show on the outside. I stare at them untill my eyes sting, but I don't see it. No-one could. But with every hour that passes - every minute and second - we get closer to the end. To the last walk into the night.
Mustn't dwell on it. Got to keep thinking positive thoughts. They don't know for certain. Think it through: They only found his jacket. The Legion is nowhere near the canal. There's no need for him to go anywhere near it. There was only a little blood. Dad was in the army. Old soldiers don't just fall into the canal.
I know; He was attacked on his way to The Legion. Someone attacked him, they fought and dad got a black eye and a bloody nose and lost his coat. His attacker ran away with it, went down to the canal to rifle through the pockets and throw anything incriminating into the water. Any moment now, dad will come staggering through the front door, singing his awful old songs, shivering in his shirtsleeves, wiping his nose on a scrap of bloody tissue and trying to roll a cigarette with one hand. He'll shout at me for sitting in his chair, and if he ever finds out that Bill sat in the parlour holding my hand then I'll really be for it, and it would all be worth it just to hear his voice. Even if he lapsed into German, which just makes him ever more angry because I don't understand it...
Except it's almost three O'clock and dad would never stay out later than midnight, even on a weekend. The Legion closes at half past eleven, and even in his worst states, it would never take him half an hour to make his way home. It's not like he's got any friends to visit. I don't think he ever did, even back in Germany.
I notice that a couple of my fingernails are starting to bleed. I've been scratching the table top; there are tiny splinters in my fingertips, under the nails. I can't feel them, but I can see them. Everything's numb. I bet I could take the bread knife and...
I see where the thought is heading and push my chair away from the table, legs scraping on the bare quarry tiles, screeching loudly in the silent night. I stand and head back into the parlour. The policeman smoked those terrible liquorice paper cheroots. The room reeks of them, the wet, twisted butts sitting in the ashtray look like miniature dog poops. I think of tiny poodles walking around the glass dish, doing their business, and I can't hold my laughter in any longer. After a good five minutes I realize that it wasn't laughter. I look up and find that I'm kneeling on the hearth rug, my face wet from tears which have soaked the seat of dad's armchair. I stood here, on this same spot, when I was a little girl, clinging to his trouser leg, listening to his stories. I didn't understand a fraction of what he was trying to tell me. Now I never will.
Back then, when I looked up at him, I saw a giant, his head in the clouds, with a booming voice and great rough hands that would scoop me up and lift me into the smoky nimbus which hung around his shoulders. We were in a different world up there. I can still smell the strange home mixed tobacco he bought from the old woman in Cooper Street. Sometimes there was a trace of cherrywood, sometimes something more like tar, sweet and rich or thick and black, all tangled up with the smell of his hair oil, the axle grease ground into his hands and the occasional nip of whiskey on his breath.
I crawl up onto the armchair, close my eyes and press my face against the worn material, breathing deeply. I can almost believe that he's still here. I can smell him, feel his warmth. I press myself into the indentation of his form on the cushions, trying not to think of the fact that it's a hollow, a negative space formed by his absence. For now it's enough to get me through the night.
I sleep, finally. The dreams respect my boundaries, for one night only. No silver stars, no burning fields, no steppenwolves or soldiers. Just oblivion. Peace. I sleep in the space carved out by my father's life, the echo of his arms around me, the ghost of his breath on my face. And then I wake to a new world.
The sun is rising and my father is dead.

In A Lonely Place

The telegraph wire pulled taught as the seven bodies moved and swayed in the evening breeze. Shadows played across the faces of the perpetrators as the early evening sun set in the western skies. The seven victims only crime was that Russian blood had once pumped through their veins. Lieutenant Deitar Schnitzler looked on as his comrades laughed as they took photographs of the hanging corpses for their war albums.
The utter darkness of war had overtaken the frivolity, the freedom, and happiness of Schnitzler’s soul. He was already tired of the savage heart that beat in the chest of modern man. He was apart from the wanton destruction and the ruthlessness of the Wermachts finest. Where and when would this war end?
He slowly walked away from the execution grounds and made his way towards a bombed out Taverna that served as his units command post within the devastated city. During his journey through the skeletal remains of obliterated concrete buildings and bomb scarred roads he came across a young girl of no more than six years of age, she carried upon her back a sack of flour. He watched as she struggled to keep the weighted package above her small and feeble frame. He dropped his MP35 to the floor and relieved the child of her heavy burden. She turned around and faced her saviour and muttered a nervous reply in Russian "Spasseebo." Schnitzler smiled back at the child as she directed him towards her destination. As he carried the sack the girl stared back at him as she played with her platted hair with grubby fingers. He was taken aback with her youthful beauty and innocence. He started to feel a streak of benevolence strike his sunken soul, a feeling of warmth and compassion, a feeling he had not felt since leaving his wife and unborn child in Stuttgart. Stuttgart he thought, to be back in her warm embrace, to watch the boats and small barges upon the calm waters of the River Neckar, to be wrapped in the arms of his adoring wife – The images and memories of home played across his battle scarred mind as he followed the graceful child across Stalingrad.
After about half an hour the child stopped outside a low, single story building, candlelight burned in a few small sill windows. She turned towards Schnitzler and gestured for him to lower the flour on to the dusty earth. "Spassebo." She said again, "Menya zovoot Margu Felicia Vatuin. Kak vas zavoot?"
Schnitzler dropped the sack to floor, he understood a little Russian and replied with his name. "Menya zovoot, Dietar Wilhelm Schnitzler."
She grinned back at him, kissed his unshaven face and uttered a few parting words "Veer boyd rusiek." He understood her words as clearly as if they where spoken in his native Germanic tongue. He walked away from the pretty young girl, the first smile visible on his sullen face since entering the abominable city of Stalingrad. He placed a cigarette into his welcoming lips and uttered her words to himself "You are my friend." We will not win this war, he thought as he walked back to his command post a more assured and enlightened soldier.

Notes